Ms. Soussana, 40, is the first Israeli to speak publicly about being sexually assaulted during captivity after the Hamas-led raid on southern Israel. In her interviews with The Times, conducted mostly in English, she provided extensive details of sexual and other violence she suffered during a 55-day ordeal.
Ms. Soussana’s personal account of her experience in captivity is consistent with what she told two doctors and a social worker less than 24 hours after she was freed on Nov. 30. Their reports about her account state the nature of the sexual act; The Times agreed not to disclose the specifics.
. . .
For months, Hamas and its supporters have denied that its members sexually abused people in captivity or during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. This month, a United Nations report said that there was “clear and convincing information” that some hostages had suffered sexual violence and there were “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence occurred during the raid, while acknowledging the “challenges and limitations” of examining the issue.
That’s bullshit. There are many news articles literally every single day about the civilians killed in Gaza. Meanwhile, on Lemmy, you have people still denying that Hamas sexually tortured women captured on October 7. Sorry it doesn’t fit your narrative.
In my opinion, there is a huge difference between civilian collateral damage during a military operation and the use of rape as a weapon of war. We xan argue about how much force Israel is using and whether X amount of collateral damage is acceptable. But gratuitously raping people has no legitimate purpose, military or otherwise. It serves to sow terror and incite retaliation, which is why Hamas did it.
Neither rape nor civilian murder, or ‘collateral damage’ as you put it, is tolerable. But minimising the actual deaths and lifelong physical casualties, rather than just rape, of hundreds of people to just ‘collateral damage’ as though you would react in the exact same way if Hamas was bombing Israeli hospitals and schools, is [insert disparaging word here].
Unintended casualties is an unavoidable side effect of urban combat. Use your brain.
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Roof knocking, phone calls to the building, and leaflets. Did you know that all three of these warning operations are conducted before the IDF drop a bomb? It’s the highest standard in history. If you think these are intended casualties you’re clearly brainwashed.
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Yes, it is absolutely the highest standard of military forewarning and you’ve failed to provide anything that confirms otherwise (and you will never be able to). No amount of head-empty baby rage is going to change reality.
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If you want to strawman my argument and put words in my mouth, you can go infect some other comment thread with your smooth brain. The concept of genocide requires more criteria than just “the death of innocents”. Get a clue.
Downvote me, hate me, and quietly move on. The language of those that can’t face the cognitive dissonance of a contradictory, inarguable fact.
We call this, projection.
You can’t come to terms with the hate and slaughter you support, so you project your guilt to others.
I’m not hearing a counterpoint.
You don’t counter coping techniques. It’s not a logical stance and will not be countered by logic.
What an ironic statement. Unless you have some kind of evidence to refute my original statement your comments are going to be a pathetic display of zero self-awareness, but keep at it if you must.
My point is that bombing a building that you believe contains soldiers sometimes also causes civilian deaths. We can debate whether sufficient care was taken, but the justification is that the army believes that enemy soldiers were present. Same with cutting off aid shipments. We can debate whether Israel has gone too far in restricting humanitarian aid, but the justification is that Israel doesn’t want supplies diverted for use by Hamas. What exactly is the justification for raping people?
Starving children is not a military operation.
You’re full of shit.
Nope. As I said in my other comment, cutting off aid to Gaza in order to starve out the militants hiding in the civilian population is a military operation that is at least plausibly justifiable. And I acknowledge the argument that Israel has taken it too far.
But what is your justification for raping people? What sort of military operation is that, exactly?
By your twisted and fucked up logic, raping people is a justifiable military operation: you rape enough people some of them ought to be military personnel and it causes irreparable harm that may dissuade them to continue fighting.
Rape, civilian casualties, killing children….all of them are unacceptable. Now fuck off you nazi piece of shit.
You really went there? Ouch. Get help.
Man, ghouls will go to any extent to justify starving children and/or war crimes when the right people are doing it.
It is not justifiable at all! You don’t bomb a town because there’s a couple terrorists living there! Collective punishment is absolutely wrong.
Starving people to out militants is unconscionable. And, doesn’t exactly work either. Hamas has stockpiled supplies. The civilians haven’t. And if you kill all the civilians to find the militants, you’ve become just as much of a monster as the militants, if not even worse.
I guess the civilians could out the militants themselves, no? Then the IDF could take out the militants with fewer civilian casualties.
It’s easy to criticize from your armchair, but what is your solution to the ancient problem of militants who commit heinous acts and then hide among the civilian population? If you don’t have a realistic alternative, then complaining about civilian casualties is just virtue signaling. Lots of people on here have obviously never had to make a hard call to accomplish a mission. The IDF is using conventional military and siege tactics, while Hamas is using human shields and terrorist tactics. Civilians lose either way. That’s war. At the end of the day, however, I would rather see Israel win, not Hamas.
Also, when people say “but what about the children”, it sounds just as disingenuous as when conservatives say it. You should remember that Hamas and their ilk are not your friends, nor are they liberal or progressive or Marxist. They are brainwashed religious zealots who would happily torture and kill you if they could.
I have no love for Hamas and I want to see them eradicated.
You know what my solution is? Go in with boots on the ground and evacuate civilians wherever there’s going to be a military operation. Make it a point to protect civilians and help them. Root out the militants where you can, evacuate civilians, and kill them. If there’s a hospital where militants are hiding, declare it a truce zone and embed yourself in the hospital by helping doctors and delivering aid. Don’t initiate any confrontation, and respect the truce. Your presence there prevents them from acting. Don’t bomb the place.
It would mean more military casualties, but that’s the price paid for being the good guys. We can’t indiscriminately bomb the enemy and kill scores of innocent people. That doesn’t help you win the war anyway.
The IDF is no closer to their poorly defined victory than they were months ago. All they have to show for is a whole lot of dead civilians, and hostages they killed themselves.
In fact, you are describing what most of the IDF operation has been. The most dramatic video makes the news. But look at the numbers instead of the emotional propaganda.
2.3 million people in Gaza. Almost 5 months of modern war in one of the mostly densely packed places on earth. 32,500 Palestinian deaths, including Hamas militants since the Hamas government doesn’t count civilians and militants separately. That is 1.4% of the population. It is obvious that the IDF isn’t just mowing down civilians or bombing them indiscrimately. All deaths are bad, yes, but 1.4% deaths is hardly a program of indiscrimate civilian annihilation. Should it be fewer? Sure, I’ll give you that. But do you have the expertise to judge whether 1.4% mortality is good or bad, given the mission to root out Hamas? What should it be, realistically? How the hell would a couple of keyboard warriors like us know? Most people are just reacting to the tragedy, not really thinking about the logistics of carrying out the IDF mission. And make no mistake: murderous groups like Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Houthis, and Iran are a menace to be destroyed. They are the enemy of civilization and have vowed to eradicate Israel and the Jews from the river to the sea. If the militants hide among the population, it will always cost civilian casualties to root them out. There could be fewer with even more restraint from the military, but collateral damage will never be zero as long as militants use human shields.
Nazis can fuck off.
This is exactly what I’m calling out, using individual crimes to justify genocide.
You won’t even accurately address the crimes because they are so heinous.
We are talking about genocide. Starving children is in no way a military operation so you can suck that lie back up your ass.
Cutting off aid to Gaza in order to starve out the militants hiding in the civilian population is at least a plausible justification. Again, we can debate whether Israel has taken it too far, but using siege tactics doesn’t make someone a Nazi. Nice try.
But what is your justification for raping people?
By your twisted and fucked up logic, raping people is a justifiable military operation: you rape enough people some of them ought to be military personnel and it causes irreparable harm that may dissuade them to continue fighting.
Rape, civilian casualties, killing children….all of them are unacceptable. Now fuck off you nazi piece of shit.
You mad, bro?
You’re still a nazi bro?
Uh… What Israel is doing is 100%, undebatable a war crime. As occupiers they have a responsibility under international law to provide food and other life necessities to the people of Gaza. That doesn’t change with the addition of an insurgency.
Whatever. The point of the article is that Hamas committed many acts of rape and torture on Oct 7. You guys don’t like that narrative so you are trying to draw me off topic by focusing on Israel’s crimes and making a false equivalence between overzealous military tactics and rape-happy terrorists. These are the kind of people that Hamas recruits. Think about it. Hamas is the enemy of civilization, not your friendly neighbourhood Starbucks revolutionary.
I won’t engage with you anymore, but at least Hamas has the basic decency to not shoot children. Israel sure as hell doesn’t.
Fixed your bad argument for you.
The point is that it is not collateral damage. The murdering of the civilian Arab population is the point of the IDF operations in Gaza.
There isn’t a single rational person here who would argue that what Hamas has done and is doing is not horrifying and awful. But Hamas is exactly who Netanyahu wanted as the adversary in Gaza. He has set this stage very carefully in order to bring about the exact scenario that is being played out in Israel and Gaza right now.
You make a great point about Netanyahu. He’s a terrible person. But he didn’t start Hamas or write their charter for them, nor did he create the Iranian theocracy or force them to create and support terrorist proxy groups. Netanyahu is an opportunist. He took advantage of an existing situation and made it worse.
Also, unfortunately, there are plenty of people on Lemmy who do rationalize Hamas’s actions as a justified “lashing out” by the victims. I don’t buy that argument for a second. No society is entirely just and history certainly isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean we should allow murder, rape, and torture as a response. The armchair revolutionaries on Lemmy disagree. What they don’t realize is that most real revolutions look less like George Washington crossing the Potomac or Ukraine’s Maidan revolution and more like Mao’s Cultural Revolution.